Are You as Excited as I am About Mega Man in Smash Bros?

Nintendo just revealed the new Super Smash Bros.today at E3, and the Villager from Animal Crossing as well as Mega Man have been confirmed as characters.

Next to NiGHTS, Mega Man was my #1 wish for Smash Bros. (and putting in a character more flight-themed than even Pit is a tall order), so I am super, super hyped. Sure, the Sonic reveal from Brawl was cool in that we got to see that console rivalry materialize in a way which was not some game about the Olympics, but Mega Man is a bigger deal to me.

We know nothing about the balance or the depth of the game outside of the fact that it seems to not be wildly different from its predecessors, so obviously this isn’t based on how great the new Smash Bros. is. Rather, it’s because Mega Man as a series is very precious to me, a piece of my childhood.

While NiGHTS into dreams… and Pokemon taught me all about being a part of a fandom, I think it was actually Mega Man which first taught me how to be a fan. By providing an exciting world with a clear template for personal input, the Robot Masters, the series allowed me to exercise my creative imagination as young as the age of 4. I still remember Cockroach Man and Glue Man to this day.

There’s a bit of information about his moveset from the trailer: He has his slide, Charge Shot, and Rush Coil, as well as the ability to access moves from a variety of Robot Masters from his own franchise. Exactly ow many weapons are available is unclear, but it looks to be quite a bit more than, say, his entry into Marvel vs. Capcom 2. Even if we didn’t know that, however, there’s something about Mega Man which makes him easy to imagine in Smash Bros., even more than in his other fighting game appearances. The run speed, the jump height, the various interactions of his attacks, it all makes sense. Perhaps the only disappointing thing is that he can’t absorb other characters’ powers it seems, so no Mega Kirby vs. Kirby Man.

I don’t have a Wii U or a 3DS yet, but this may be my incentive. Well, that and Pokemon X/Y.

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4 comments

I won’t lie, I watched the whole Nintendo Direct and the Mega Man reveal at the end brought me to tears. Very joyful ones. I think the reason I’m so happy about this is because Smash Bros is the perfect franchise for the Blue Bomber to be remembered, not as Capcom’s most famous character, but as a true video game icon. With 8 numbered games on the NES, he deserves his place amongst all the other great Nintendo characters of old. Now I just need Simon Belmont and we can make a Captain N reunion.

Based on the tidbits of gameplay from the trailer, Mega Man’s borrowed Robot Master moves appear to be single standard attacks, i.e. smash attacks, B moves, aerials, grab. That’s in line with the other smash bros characters whose attacks are homage to various past games they’ve starred in. It would be neat to see a variable special attack, say if down-B rotated through a bunch of powers to choose from, like how Olimar rotated pikmin.

Mega Man fits the Smash Bros-verse because unlike arcade-style fighting games, Smash Bros was designed to function like a platformer. Many of the great 8 and 16-bit era games that SSB pulls from were adventure-platformers: Super Mario, Metroid, Donkey Kong, Kirby, Sonic, etc. Naturally Mega Man fits like a glove.